Sermon — August 11, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

You may know that I just returned on Thursday from a three-week vacation visiting Alice’s family on Long Island, which was exactly as chaotic and wonderful and relaxing as a family vacation with three kids six and under should be. You may not know that when we’re out there, I have a certain morning routine: I’ll wake up, and go for a run, and on the way home I’ll tend to stop for a treat, either at the Blue Duck Bakery to pick up a baguette and some sliced multigrain, or at NoFoRoCo, the North Fork Roasting Company, just down the street, which has some of the best pastries in the world as far as I’m concerned, but certainly the best in eastern Long Island. Or maybe at the farm stand up the road.

So as far as the saying “you are what you eat” is concerned, I return to you this Sunday consisting almost entirely of bread. And croissants. And peaches, actually, because it’s peach season in Long Island right now, and I could eat about a dozen of those a day. Also apricots. And figs.

But I have bread on the mind today, and so does Jesus.

“I am the bread of life,” he says. (John 6:35) And John’s gospel will spend the next few weeks exploring exactly what that means. It’s a rich image: Like so much of what Jesus says, it can’t possibly be true, it must be a metaphor, and yet there’s something more than metaphorical about this idea of the “bread of life.” On the one hand, we know that Jesus, when he says this, is not literally a walking, talking loaf of bread. He’s human being. We know that although we have come to Jesus, we still hunger and we still thirst. There’s clearly some spiritual meaning of “eating” and “drinking” in what Jesus says. Maybe it involves digesting and reflecting on Jesus’ words and teachings, because he quickly moves from this image of eating the bread of heaven, to being drawn to and learning from God in Christ. The hunger, at least in part, is spiritual hunger; the nourishment is spiritual nourishment.

And yet, on the other hand, we also find ourselves coming here to Jesus, week after week, and being fed; not just metaphorically, spiritually fed, but fed, with real bread, in which and through which we believe that somehow, mysteriously, Christ is here. We eat this bread, and even though the portions are small, it is real food. We digest it, and it becomes part of us, and the Body of Christ that we receive becomes part of our own bodies, and just as the living bread came down from heaven to us, we are brought up into the presence of God.

Both literally and spiritually, we are what we eat. We become what we consume.

I sometimes wonder about our mental or spiritual diets these days. What are we consuming, and what are we becoming?

We talk about “media consumption,” sometimes, and eating is a pretty good metaphor for reading, or watching, or listening to something. When we read anxious stories about the coming demise of the planet or the nation, we become more anxious. When we listen to angry diatribes about the people with whom we disagree, we become more angry. When we spend our summers watching Olympic commentary, we become opinionated experts on sports we only think about every four years, and in fact, that’s part of what makes it fun.

But I wonder whether the diets of our attention have become unbalanced, over time. Most of the media that we consume is the mental equivalent of junk food, in a very particular way. Just as food scientists carefully calibrate the balance of sugar and salt and crunch to make snack foods irresistible without providing much additional nutrition, our politically-polarized media outlets and especially our algorithm-driven social media feeds are designed to captivate our attention, not to feed our souls. Fear and mockery and anger generate a lot more clicks and a lot more ad dollars than joy and peace and respect. It becomes easier and easier over time to be sucked into a cycle of despair and fear, because we are what we eat; we become what we consume.

And I can’t help but compare what we become when we consume these kinds of media to the image Paul offers to the Ephesians of a life in which we’re filled with grace. Paul tells them, “Be angry, but do not sin… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths… Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger, wrangling and slander… and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Eph. 4:26, 29, 31–32)

For a minute, this morning, be honest with yourself. You don’t have to admit it to anyone else. Just think: How much of what you consume with your mind, how much of what you read or watch or see on your phone, fills you with bitterness and wrath and anger, with wrangling and slander? And how much of it is giving you a kind and tender heart? How much of it is leading you to forgive, as you have been forgiven? I suspect that for most of us, the ratio favors anger.

I don’t say this as if news or politics were bad. I don’t say this as if current events were unimportant. They’re very important. I say this because what the angel says to the prophet Elijah applies just as well to each one of us: “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (1 Kings 19:7)

Elijah sits in despair, unable to go any further. He’s a prophet living in fear of what the people in power will do. He’s done what he can, and he’s all out of strength. But God isn’t done with him. God has greater things in store, and so God sends an angel, and says to him, “Get up and eat.” And Elijah eats, and goes back to sleep. And the angel wakes him up again, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much.” And he gets up, and eats, and travels forty days, and it’s then and only then that he hears that still, small voice of God.

This is not a theological statement about the nature of bread. It’s not a finger-wagging reminder or an exhortation to improve his diet, literal or metaphorical. It’s a simple statement of fact: if you don’t eat something that nourishes you, you’re not going to make it to the end.

 Whatever your politics, the next three months or so will probably be an anxious time. Even politics aside, I can safely predict that this year will be full of opportunities to feed on anger, and anxiety, and fear, because every year is.

So what do you need in your spiritual diet this year to make it to the end of the journey? What do you need to put away bitterness and wrath, and to fill yourself on kindness and love? What sustenance do you need to “walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God?” (Eph. 5:2)

We’ll have a few weeks more to delve into the living bread: But what does it mean for you, today, for this meal to feed you, so that you can make it for another week?

Sermon — July 7, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Almost fifteen years ago, the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a wonderful TED talk with the title, “The Danger of a Single Story.” The talk was a series of stories about what happens when we reduce all the complexity of a person’s life or a nation’s culture to a single story, as if something could only be one thing at once. And she explored this through stories from her own life.

She began with a visit to her family’s servants in the village they’d come from. Like many middle-class Nigerians in the city, her family employed domestic help. And her mother always told her how poor they were, how desperate the lives of their families were out there in the countryside. Chimamanda was shocked when they went for a visit one day. Not only was their village more beautiful than the desperate poverty she’d imagined, but the servants whom she’d been raised to pity were local heroes—the ones who’d made it in the big city and came back to spread their wealth. Her mother had only told her one story about their lives; but there were many more.

The pattern was reversed when she came to America for college, and realized that the single story of poverty she had been told about her family’s servants was the same story all her classmates had heard about Africa as a whole. Her parents weren’t oil tycoons, but they weren’t subsistence farmers—they were university professors. And yet her classmates looked at her as the distillation of every news story about any country in Africa. They asked her how her English got so good—it’s the official language of Nigeria. They looked to her for answers about countries thousands of miles across the continent. They asked her to play the tribal music of her people—and they were shocked when she put on Mariah Carey.

The danger of the single story is that limits who a person can be and what they can do. When people tell a single story about you, they insist that they already know who you are—that they know your beginning, middle, and end. Chimamanda’s mother told a single story, and she was wrong. Her classmates told a single story about her, and she turned it on its head.

And in our Gospel reading this morning, the danger of the single story comes to Jesus, and it turns out that the story that the people get to experience is exactly the story that they tell.

Jesus has been traveling around Galilee for a while, sailing back and forth across the sea, healing people and teaching and casting out demons, as usual. And he finally comes back to Nazareth, and begins to teach there, in the synagogue, on the Sabbath. And the people who hear him are amazed. But not exactly in a good way. “Where’d he get all this?” they say. (Mark 6:1) Isn’t this Mary’s kid? That’s James’s little brother, right? Isn’t that his sister over there? He’s no preacher. He’s no rabbi. He’s a carpenter. What’s he doing in the pulpit? they ask. And they take offense. (6:2–3)

They already know his story. They already know his role. They already know his place, and he needs to learn what it is.

And remarkably, Jesus goes along with it. He shakes his head, and offers a wise saying about prophets and their hometowns, but “he could do no deed of power there… except” heal a few people who are sick. (6:5)

It turns out that if you want to stop Jesus right in his tracks, this is the way to do it. If you feel like there’s something changing in your life, some growth or development, some new opportunity or lost capability, and you want to resist what the Holy Spirit might be doing—you can. If you have the sensation that God might be extending you an invitation to leave something behind in your life and step into something new, and you want to decline that invitation—you can reply with your regrets.

Just stick to the single story you tell about yourself.

I can’t leave this job right now and take that one—I’m supposed to care about X, even though I’m really finding myself more drawn to Y. I can’t let my children take care of me, even though they’re fifty or sixty years old—I’m a strong and independent person, and strong and independent people don’t need help. I can’t become friends with this neighbor, I can’t cross this line in our community—I know what they are like already, and we have nothing in common, I’m sure.

If you want to try to put an end to what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life, you can.

But then again, here you are in church. So what if you want to cooperate instead?

The danger in the Gospel this morning is the danger of the single story. But the invitation is the invitation to be like the apostles, to live our lives like those disciples Jesus sent out two by two to teach.

He sends them out, leaving everything behind. They take nothing with them with them but a walking stick—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts. They go out, to share the love of God with the world, and Jesus tells them that they should be prepared to fail. He tells them that times will come when they’re treated like his old neighbors treated him—when people are so stuck in the single story that they tell, that they refuse to welcome this story of good news. And he tells them what to do when others try to dismiss them. Don’t fight, don’t argue, don’t wag your finger—but shake the dust off your feet, and walk away. And where Jesus had failed, the disciples succeed: they cast out many demons, and heal many people who are sick.

I wonder what it would be like to think of yourself, on your journey through this world, as being like one of those apostles. I wonder what it would be like to lay down all the stories that you tell about yourself, the stories that limit you to do what you have always done and be who you have always been, and listen for the story the Holy Spirit is trying to tell. I wonder what it would be like to go out on the metaphorical road, taking only your walking stick, bringing only your curiosity, and faith, and the good news that God loves you and everyone around you, and to see where that road leads. I wonder what it would be like to be prepared to fail, to know that when you come to a fork in the road and you choose the wrong one, when things don’t work out, you can always shake the dust off your feet.

Everyone in this room is on a different journey through the world. We find ourselves at different places on the road. But it’s all one road. Our lives, and the lives of the people around us all contain maintain stories, and yet they are all part of God’s one story of love for us. And we are part of that story, whether we choose to be active participants or simply to stand by.

So I want to close by offering again the prayer with which this service began:

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sermon — June 30, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

These two stories of healing couldn’t be more different from one another; but when you get down to it, they’re exactly the same.

Jairus’s young daughter is in an acute crisis, near the end of her life; the woman who touches Jesus’ cloak has been suffering chronically for longer than Jairus’ daughter has been alive. Jairus comes openly to Jesus before the crowd. The woman approaches surreptitiously. He begs him over and over to heal his daughter, she reaches out without saying a word. He’s is a prominent member of society, a leader of the local synagogue, with messengers and mourners waiting back at home; she comes to Jesus alone and bankrupt, and the only social contact we hear about is with the physicians, under whose care she’s suffered much.

Their circumstances and their behaviors couldn’t be more different, and in fact they find themselves somewhat in competition. After all, when Jesus and Jairus set out for Jairus’ home, to heal his daughter, there’s no time to lose. She’s at the point of death. But the woman touches Jesus’ cloak, and she is healed, and Jesus turns aside. “Who touched my clothes?” he says. (Mark 5:30)

And I can only imagine how Jairus must have felt, just in front of him, leading the way to his daughter’s sickbed. He’s rushed out to find Jesus, and he’s found him; even better, he’s actually convinced him to come heal his daughter, and now Jesus has stopped along the way to ask, “Who touched my clothes?” in the middle of a crowd. Even the disciples are amazed— “Look at all these people,” they say. How could anyone know? (5:31) But the woman comes forward and falls on her knees. And Jesus blesses her and sends her along her way. (5:34)

Mark doesn’t tell us what’s going through Jairus’s head. But we can guess. If Jesus needs to stop and heal somebody, fine. But why the conversation? Why the delay? This woman’s sickness is important, for sure, but not urgent, not like his daughter’s illness; and yet Jesus takes his time, and I imagine Jairus somewhere between impatient and afraid.

And his worst fears are about to be realized, because while Jesus is still speaking, while he is still stopped along the way, someone comes bearing a message from Jairus’s house. “Your daughter is dead,” they say. And Jairus, who was full of words at the beginning of the story, begging Jesus repeatedly to come heal his daughter, is left speechless as his relief turns into despair.

But Jesus simply says, “Do not fear, only believe.” (5:37) He sends away the crowd who follow him, and the crowd of mourners. And despite their incredulous laughter at the idea that the child who has died while Jesus dilly-dallied on the road is merely asleep, he says to her, “Get up.” And she does.

This is a long story, and it’s full of strange and enticing details. There are so many questions that you might want to ask. What does it mean to say that Jesus’ healing power can simply flow out of him, that miracles can happen without his knowledge just because someone touched his cloak? Why does Mark record what Jesus says to the girl in Aramaic, Talitha cum, while translating the rest? Why does Jesus do everything in secrecy, sending away the crowd and the mourners and telling the family and the disciples to tell no one what they have seen? What’s up with the snack at the end?

If you step back for a minute, you might ask a bigger question. I said that the two healing stories couldn’t be more different, but at the heart of things, they’re really the same: Two stories about desperate people putting their faith in Jesus. This isn’t faith as a statement of belief, a collection of well-thought-out ideas about God and the world. This is faith as the last desperate act of someone who’s tried everything else. This is the trust that his help might make a difference. Jairus is so convinced that Jesus can save his daughter, in fact, that he gives up his last chance to see her alive to come and find him.

And the faith of these two people seems to be the catalyst for the healing that comes. “Daughter, your faith has made you well,” Jesus says to the woman he has healed. “Go in peace, and be healed.” (Mark 5:34)

If only it were so easy for us.

 The connection between healing, faith, and prayer is one of the most difficult ones in spiritual life, in my experience. We want to pray for healing, for ourselves, for other people, for the world. We want God to act, to cure us of our ailments whether they’re physical, or psychological, or spiritual. We wish we could just reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, and be healed. And sometimes, remarkably, it seems that we are healed. I don’t know about you, but I really have seen examples of this kind of change. Sometimes that means recovery from an illness or injury in a way that baffles doctors’ expectations. Sometimes it’s recovery from an addiction that seemed impossible to shake. Sometimes it’s a sudden about-turn in life, that can only be described as a divine intervention.

But then, there are all the other times. All too often, the healing that we pray for doesn’t come. Our sick friend gets sicker, no matter how hard we pray; or our seemingly-healthy friend is suddenly at the brink, at the very moment when things seemed like they were finally looking up. And the more we hope for a miracle, the more we pray for healing, the stronger our faith that God will surely help, the worse it feels when nothing seems to change. Like Jairus, we’re left holding the disappointment and frustration that comes when our hopes for something better are dashed.

 And I think we find ourselves in this second situation more often than not. The story of the New Testament is the story of miracles that come one after another. The story of Christian life is a story of prayers that seem to go unanswered.

But if the story of Jairus’ daughter tells us anything, maybe it’s that sometimes, it’s just too soon to tell.

If you pause the story when Jesus sends away the woman who’s been healed, Jairus’s mission has been a failure. He thought his prayers were being answered, he got his hopes up, but God didn’t answer soon enough. Jesus delayed, and his daughter died, and the healing that he hoped for never came, and the story ends with grief.

But the story doesn’t end there. Within minutes, everything has changed. Jairus’s daughter is alive. She’s walking around, and having something to eat. His prayers were not unanswered; they just hadn’t been answered yet, and God was doing something that Jairus hadn’t asked for, something that he probably hadn’t even imagined was possible.

That’s the challenging hope of the Christian faith: God’s response to our prayers for healing is never “no,” but sometimes it’s “not yet,” and sometimes “yes” doesn’t come this side of eternity. Because we know, after two thousand years of Christian life, that we don’t get to have Jairus’s miracle in the quite the same way. We say every Sunday that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, but we don’t mean that that will come in this world. Like Jairus, we will see the people we have loved and lost again, but in the world to come. The pain of loss and grief are just as real for us as they were for him on that long walk home, and our grief lasts much longer. But given the choice between two worlds—the world in which God doesn’t answer most of our prayers, and the world in which God just hasn’t answered them yet, I know which one I’d choose, any day.

I don’t know which prayers of yours need answering today; where you need God to do something that hasn’t happened yet, where you need something to change in yourself or someone else, but the change has not yet come. I don’t know where your soul “waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5)

But I hold onto the promise that’s at the heart of Christian hope: That there is a God who loves you, and who cares for you, a God who is answering your prayers, even if you can’t see it happening yet; that there is a future in which our divisions will cease and our pain will end—that however long the night is that we spend in weeping, joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:6)

Sermon — June 23, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

I’m always amazed by whose daily work consists of dealing with relatively stressful parts of the rest of our lives. The surgeon who walks into a room and describes precisely how she’s going to slice through your heart, with no apparent anxiety about the procedure, because while this is the scariest moment of your life, for her, it’s just a Tuesday at the office. The skydiving instructor who casually launches people out of an airplane before jumping out himself, as he’s done hundreds of times before. The airline pilot who pops onto the announcements to say, “This is your captain speaking. It looks like we’ve got a little bit of bumpy air up ahead, so I’m going to put on the seatbelt sign…” You can’t see him through the door, but he’s probably up there popping Fritos while you’re clutching the armrests for dear life! These people can be soothing—surely, if they think it’s not such a big deal, maybe it’s not such a big deal. But they’re also unnerving—after all, isn’t there a chance they’re just completely nuts?

Jesus is one of these people, for sure. Jesus is with the disciples in the boat, but he’s acting in a way that’s not at all like the disciples in the boat.

As a matter of fact, he’s been with the disciples in the boat all day. Such a large crowd had gathered that morning that Jesus had gotten into a boat on the sea and sat there, while people crowded around on land to listen. (Mark 4:1) He told them parables about sowing seed, and hiding lamps under a bushel, and how the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, and “on that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let’s go across to the other side.’” (4:35) Now, Jesus is tired—speaking to a crowd without a microphone will do that to you—and he falls asleep. Deeply asleep. A huge wind starts to blow, and the waves are breaking over the bow, and the boat is being swamped. You can imagine the scene: people rushing around, trying to bail out; throwing things overboard, and desperately trying to remember how to swim.

But in the stern, Jesus is asnooze. And they go back and start shaking him—“Teacher,” they say, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing!?” (4:38) And he wakes up, and yawns. And what does he do?

Does he start shouting orders, like a seasoned sea captain, like the commanding Messiah they might expect him to be? “Batten down the hatches! Ease the sails!” (I’m not a sailor.) No. He does not.

Does he call upon the name of God, like a wise pastor, praying in words that give voice to the fear and pain of his people and bring them comfort, that artfully articulate their deepest desires in the moment of their greatest need? “O God, you still the storms of the sea; surround us with your loving care; protect us from all danger; and bring us in safety to our journey’s end. Amen.” No. He does not.

Does he grab a bucket and start bailing? Nope. Does he panic, too? Of course not. He looks over the side of the boat at the sea, and he says, “You stop it! Chill!” And it does.

This little vignette tells us so much about God, and about Jesus, and about our lives, and I think it goes back to a distinction I noted earlier: just as Jesus was with the disciples in that boat on those stormy seas, but he wasn’t like the disciples in that boat on those stormy seas, Jesus is with us on our sometimes-stormy pathways through life—but Jesus isn’t quite like us, and that’s a very good thing.

Jesus is with us. And Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Our God is not a cruel god, playing with us for sport, creating storms to torment us. And our God is not a cold, clinical god, swamping us with waves to test our faith or improve our endurance. God is not an absent god, creating the universe and laying down a moral order and then gone off somewhere on vacation, while the world burns and our prayers pile up in the inbox. Our God is a compassionate God, a God who “suffers with” us—this is what “compassion” means, “suffering with”—a God who comes among us on earth, and experiences what we experience. God feels every wave as it hits the boat, and God knows what it’s like to be swamped.

God is with us, but God is not exactly like us. Jesus doesn’t panic, when the people around him are panicking. He’s not afraid of the wind and the storm. He absorbs their panic and their fear. Like that skilled surgeon or jaded airline pilot he remains unbothered, infuriatingly calm. But he doesn’t just stay calm. He acts, in an unexpected way. He speaks directly to the sea, and tells it to be still, and it is.

There’s a dramatic irony in this story, something we know that the disciples don’t. “Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?” they ask, and we know that in fact, he cares very much. He cares not just about them, but about all of us; not just about the fact that they might be perishing in that boat, but that we are all perishing; that we are all only mortal, in the end. He knows, and he cares, and he acts.

In this story, he immediately stills the storm. But there’s an echo of another ending here, another way that he could act. Did anyone hear the echo of the book of Jonah in this story? Jonah flees from God’s call, and gets on a ship, and God sends a storm. There’s wind and waves and the sailors are afraid, but Jonah lies asleep. The two scenes are the same. The sailors wake Jonah up, and tell him to pray to his god, like they are praying to theirs. And Jonah, like Jesus, chooses to act. Unlike Jesus, he doesn’t rebuke the storm. He tells the sailors, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.” (Jonah 1:12) And they do. And the ship is saved. And that’s where the whale comes in, by the way—God sends a whale to swallow him up, and Jonah remains entombed in the belly of the whale three days, and then rises again. (Does that ring any bells?)

Jesus doesn’t throw himself into the sea to save his companions. Not yet. But that’s where the story is going. The echoes of Jonah are no accident. Jesus is going to throw himself off the boat, metaphorically speaking, to save the people around him. Jesus is going to hand himself over to death on the Cross, and after three days, rise again. And it’s that act of self-sacrificing love that saves us from the power of death so that we, too, can travel safely across the stormy seas to the other side.

Maybe this morning you feel battered by the storm, tossed around by the waves and barely hanging on. Maybe this morning you feel good, but you remember what that’s like. Or maybe you look around at a world that’s full of chaos, and violence, and war, and like the disciples, sometimes you feel afraid.

You’re not alone. God is with you in the boat. God loves you, and God cares that you’re in danger, and God comes to be with you there. And you are allowed to cry out! You’re allowed to say to God, like the disciples say to Jesus, “Don’t you care!?” That doesn’t bother God one bit. Jesus is calm, whatever the source of the storm. And when you bring that fear and pain to God in prayer, God can help to lighten the load, because God can carry any amount of it for you, and God will not be swamped.

Sometimes God works through other people, of course. Sometimes God is present to us in our own, quiet prayer, but often God is present to us in a friend’s listening ear, or in a conversation with someone we trust. You even pay someone to sit and listen while you talk to God sometimes, even if you think you’re talking to me. And that’s all well and good, and I hope that it helps calm the waves.

But God is not just a listening ear. Like Jesus, waking up in that boat, God chooses to act, in mysterious and sometimes surprising ways. I wish it were the case that God would simply still the storm. I wish it were the case that we could see such quick results. But who am I to try to guess where God is acting and where God’s not? I wasn’t there, nor was Job, when God laid the foundation of the earth, when the morning stars sang together and the heavenly beings shouted for joy. (Job 38:4, 7) I can only trust that God is stilling the storm to a whisper, that God is working in our lives and in our world to calm the waves, and that God will one day bring us safely that distant shore.